Where Conflicts Thrive, Education Dies!

Syed Zahid ul Arshad
Societies, since times immemorial, have had education as an important thread intertwined in their social fabric in one colour or the other. Education was at times restricted to elite classes only and at times it was gender specific. History, like a mirror, shows us the scars of the wounds that we have suffered in the past in freeing education from shakles of caste, class and gender. These scars are an important reminder to keep the spirit of our achievements alive and keep realising the changing faces of importance of education in changing times. Education has gained a significant importance in modern society. The foundation of modern society is based on education. With traditional ties of kinship, family etc becoming weaker in modern societies, education is indeed a binding force in so many ways. It has become much more than just enlightenment. Education has an important role in developing values in modern societies, providing a forum where society examines its issues and identifies solutions. The development of human resource to the full potential with loads of skills being of course the all time objective of education. The resurgence of jews after the Holocaust and their exile from Europe has a history of their determined focus on education. Japan’s post-war success despite the scarce resources is a perfect example of how investment in education and human resources can take a nation from ashes and dust to prosperity and progress.
“While the world is preparing children to join NASA, we are preparing our children to join distance education.”
“We are heading towards a well qualified but uneducated class of future generations who would be all equipped with degrees but little knowledge and personality development.”
Knowledge Based Economy is considered important for a country if it aspires to move from the middle-income to the high-income level. It is such realisation about the importance of education that makes the modern democracies to enshrine education as a fundamental right in their respective constitutions, emphasis on development of education by international organisations like UN and the use of education related data to calculate Human Development Index (HDI) of countries etc. Unfortunately, on the other hand its the education which suffers at the very first instance of any slightest of the disturbances worldwide, let alone the disastrous situations of Coronavirus outbreak or turbulance that countries like Palestine and Syria went through. The war in Syria has deprived about three million children of education, including 800,000 refugees in neighboring countries, according to UNICEF. Likewise there are different problems related to education in different parts of the world. Problems in Kashmir wrt to education are wide ranging from structural to infrastructural to socio-political. Today, I am going to throw light on some of the issues that our students and we as a collective society are facing. We are heading towards a well qualified but uneducated class of future generations who would be all equipped with degrees but with little knowledge and personality development. While Delhi is innovating and progressing with Happiness Classes, our classrooms are ever so dismal, with blackboards having written on them some details of a lecture that was delivered in some distant past. While students in other parts have online and offline sources to clear their doubts, our students are bound by uncertainty of circumstances. At the slightest of disturbances, the conducive environment turns hostile for the students in Kashmir restricting their both online and offline sources of knowledge. With availability of tremendous knowledge on internet the patterns and levels of competitive exams is getting more and more advanced but our students are unable to keep pace with the changing times. Worst of all we have some unique cases of what I call as ‘Syllabus Subsidy’ in Kashmir, it’s like govt gives MSP to farmers and subsidies to different industries to protect them in economic slowdowns etc, the same way government comes to rescue our students in times of exams under distress with 50% syllabus relaxation. Education process is meant to create an alround development of a child in a learning environment provided by schools and colleges but the government’s pathological approach of circumventing the education process and jumping to conducting exams at 50% syllabus relaxation can in no way be an alternative to classroom education. Instead of looking for sustainable and productive alternatives,such actions on part of the government have reduced our education to conducting exams for mere class promotions only. Paper checking has become the only job of our talented teachers. Teacher training programs are carried on regular basis in winters but with no students for them to teach in summers. While the world is preparing children to join NASA, we are preparing our children to join distance education right from their KGs. How communities choose to educate their children can reflect wider socio-political environments and power dynamics in a nation.
Way forward: It’s necessary to address these issues and protect the future of our generations by collectively taking the responsibility for the same. Accordingly, the government should take steps to ensure that education doesn’t suffer even in the worst cases. Instead of syllabus relaxation it should look for creating long term alternatives to keep education unaffected. Provision of lease lines of internet to educational institutes so that they have an all time internet facility. Creation of different indoor stadiums, cultural centers for alround development in all districts, small resourceful libraries in villages and ensuring they are operational in atleast those areas where they can run despite adverse circumstances can be a giant leap forward. Its also important to introduce talent search tests and innovative programs on local levels to keep students exploring and engaged in studies beyond the four walls of their schools. Government should also provide a career counselling platform to the students to guide them and indeed re-instil motivation into them that they might have lost due to disruptions in education. Governments should also encourage the NGOs in partcipating to contribute in raising the levels of education and ensure that education remains the least effected sector in any sort of adverse conditions. In healthcare when movement is not possible, employees are asked to join in their local dispensaries, hospitals etc to cater to health needs, its primarily because we have prioritised health sector and rightly so. We need to prioritise the education sector as well in the same manner where teachers can teach locally in areas of their residence especially in events of threat to longer distance movements.Parents role in such cases becomes increasingly important especially in case of children in primary education. Further all schools and Institutes should maintain a database of their lectures for every class which they can share with the students in cases of emergency. There is a dire need to protect and nurture the flower of education otherwise we may lose it again to winds of socio-political instabilities like we already lost it to such turmoil once. Its very important to keep education as protected from such impacts as possible.I strongly believe that socio-political conflicts and education should not be mutually exclusive. Do you?
(The author is a social activist and an MBA from JMI, New Delhi. Views are his own, [email protected])